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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23229163">Insolitus</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot'>pettiot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Final Fantasy XII</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character is a Ghost, Forbidden Love, Incest, M/M, Priest!AU, lust is a sin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2010-04-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2010-04-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:14:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,937</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23229163</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Bahamut's fall, Noah and Basch try to make peace with themselves, the world, each other, in the one place that is seemingly dedicated to peace: the temple at Mount Bur-Omisace.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Balthier/Basch, Basch/Noah, Noah/Balthier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Basch determined from the outset that this could be nothing but a dream, to arrive so unfortunately timed with his ordination on the morrow.</p>
<p>The weight atop him gave him first cause to awaken. The high barred window sliced the moonlight thin, but the illumination proved sufficient to keep Basch calmer than he would have suspected himself capable of, for he sighted – and recognized – impossibility: that familiar jawline, spiked hair, shadow of cheekbone, dangle of earring.</p>
<p>Basch did not struggle, cry out, nor otherwise resist: his passivity had ever proved the basis on which this love was founded. Had Balthier been this shameless while still living, the potential of what he could have wrought from Basch's willing ease was limitless. Dead now and a dream, Balthier appeared liberated of all constraint of clothing as well as his shame, his form and stance resembling a creeping cat on hands and knees. Basch was giddy at the detail born from his usually staunch imagination, and thought he could espy a tail lashing from the curve of that spine's disturbingly tempting terminus. Beneath piled furs, even that absurdity would not deter Basch's lust.</p>
<p>Balthier progressed ably as though born to liberate men from clothing, freeing Basch from furs and his robes beneath.  A reprehensible surge kept the cold from curtailing Basch's desire, and Balthier was swift to cup that throbbing priapsism as though to further preserve what warmth there was.  Surprisingly, Balthier's hands generated a heated friction that bordered on pain.  Basch went so far as to look, and long; aware of his audience, Balthier grinned and leaned closer to his task, lips open. This dream-born ghost of Balthier teased as the man would have, for howsoever close Balthier hovered, he did not move to swallow.  Basch would not have it any other way.  Balthier exhaled directly.</p>
<p>Warmth became but another overwhelming spice atop Basch's longing. Balthier's fingers quivered in response, careful to avoid the spill. Basch shivered and sweated in the aftermath, all at once.</p>
<p>Outside, the orthros bell rang, vague and distant through fog's veil. The sky was lightening, and on his cot across the room, Noah would be stirring. Or so he should be, Basch admitted, for he could hear nothing but his own breath, Noah's own depth of inhalation still betraying he slept. Basch knew now this must be a dream, for the two years of Balthier's death aside, Noah had not once slept through the morning service.</p>
<p>Today both he and Noah were to foreswear all their corporeal pursuits, but it was still dark yet.  Basch felt grateful the pirate succumbed to his embrace easily enough, and facing each other, Basch sought the mouth.  Still true to his origin, this dream-born Balthier turned aside. Instead of a kiss, his tongue licked flame against Basch's cheek. That Balthier found that cheek wet with tears, nigh on the verge of freezing from the Mount's chill – ah, Basch could not care what a dream thought of him.</p>
<p>'Balthier.' Basch said that long-unspoken name quietly, for Noah continued to dream. 'The gods grow crueller with age to taunt me with this, and today of all days, Balthier, Balthier.'</p>
<p>'Not so hard fought this time.' Basch's ears even imagined Balthier's voice, just as rich and ironic at this unlikely scenario. 'T'was always the easier task to win your spend in my rear than my name from your lips.'</p>
<p>'A lie, when you were the one that never spoke my name.  Nor anyone's but for Fran's.'</p>
<p>'A song to hear you say it now, regardless. Say it again.'</p>
<p>Balthier's wandering tongue sought salt, source and spill both. The warmth of breath at Basch's eyelashes felt truly obscene, even more than when Balthier had knelt to tend his lust. This, Basch decided, must be the true beginning of his martyrdom, if even a man's breath would drive him to compromise himself. The mortification shook him worse than the cold. His abstinence, and Noah's, spanned for longer than the years Basch lost to Nalbina. Or so it had done, before Balthier undid all bonds.  Basch's satiation felt strangely like a preparation for his own death.</p>
<p>A nostalgic  hunger moved Basch to set his ear to the warmth of Balthier's chest, but he could not hear a heartbeat. That saddened him, for the pirate's heart had always raced with the rhythm of a running man, too fast for Basch to ever dream of pursuit. It would be a luxurious death if Basch died now, not quite damned by the spill across his belly.</p>
<p>Basch insisted, his fingers long across Balthier's jaw: 'Do not turn away from me now.  Balthier.'</p>
<p>'Unwise,' Balthier warned, 'to want to kiss a d—'</p>
<p>'Hush, tis unwise of me to even dream this, but I want. My life has been too full of last chances lost.'</p>
<p>The pirate ceased his struggle.  The spell of that kiss consumed even agony for a time, but self deception was never a sustaining thought. Basch realised, belated, that Balthier's lips closed over a void that burned hotter than Hell.</p>
<p>Basch shouted, recoiling in surprise and pain. His fingertips leapt to assure himself of reality, chill on his flaming mouth. The burn was apparent to touch as a ginger stickiness, blisters rising even as Basch felt for an explanation.</p>
<p>Basch's cry had a secondary effect, for across the room Noah cursed, jolted awake. He reached for the lamp. A hardy will could not withstand the morning's confusion, for Noah succeeded only in tumbling shaving mirror, blade, jug and bowl off the sole footstool that must serve them as a table and chair both. The clatter gave Balthier ample opportunity to sigh, and so mournful Basch reached to hold him close again.</p>
<p>Basch recognized then that Balthier's unwary warmth of flesh was less Basch's own fever-dream than an inferno born elsewhere. The thought, unacknowledged, could not do Basch any good now; glum, and quite alone (for from his arms Balthier vanished as though dispelled by the light), he turned to face the expectation of his brother's wrath.</p>
<p>Noah recovered his poise with the lamp.  He regarded Basch with his customary expression of mixed resentment and curious focus. It was then Basch realized that whatever this visitation was, Noah shared it somehow: a garish streak of freshly blistered flesh near claimed Noah's left eye, marking brow above and cheekbone below. In that location, it was a clear mockery of the scar that carved Basch's own brow.</p>
<p>Fascinated once he realized what would have caused that particular splash of flame, Basch quite forgot his own modesty. Noah's expression was a sufficiently sharp reminder, but Basch resigned himself to his liberated flesh. His seared lip damned him more than his nudity.<br/>Unexpectedly, Noah's sharpness targeted the absent presence between them. 'We should call him by the Kiltias' name of Saint Niklaus ni Kerwon, that he comes for all men's damned judgment in a single night.'</p>
<p>'He is dead.' Basch winced when his burn cracked open, salt within and without an unexpected brine. 'He is dead, Noah, he is dead, and we but dreaming the same dream, he is dead—'</p>
<p>Noah swallowed his irritation audibly, his brow creased with pain. 'Damnation does not respect the dead. And Ffamran still respects nothing that the brat feels amply justified to target my sight when striking his satisfaction. That he will not respect death is no surprise.'</p>
<p>The chill invaded through Basch's raw lip like a living thing, weighing his words. 'He was kinder, in my imagining, than to loose across me.'</p>
<p>'Life itself has been kinder to you, Basch. I doubt your surprise that Ffamran follows that trend.'</p>
<p>Basch clenched his fists as though to hold his stray angry spike tight: he would not return to Noah the weight that life's kindnesses whipped out of his flesh. They had both agreed to let the past slide: it was for peace they served together now, and they would not permit their own unquiet to weigh against the world.  Peace would be their penance and reward both.  Unlike the score of years past, this they would share.</p>
<p>'Unless you intent to come as couth as you were born, Basch, dress with some humility.'</p>
<p>Abruptly as his words, Noah arose to pace. Basch noted his brother's visible lack of relief; that Noah's penitence could resist even a dream's offered relief was no surprise to the weaker-willed brother.</p>
<p>'Aye, I'll come, and with humility to match yours standing still at attention, but where do you go? We have already missed the morning service.'</p>
<p>Basch observed Noah's old habit of counting to hold his temper, each fingertip folded to his brother's palm. Basch shivered in the chill, as did Noah, as though their fits were contagious.</p>
<p>'We go to the sacerdos on watch. Are you so blithe to ignore that demons are walking freely into the heart of a Kiltias temple? The ordained must be informed.'</p>
<p>For a long moment the word sat in Basch's periphery as though gibberish, and unworthy of his reasoning.  His rising grief would not permit his continued silence. Basch always had the ability to avoid deeper thought, and when younger he had considered this a virtue for concepts had plagued Noah so, no benediction. As an adult Basch found his linear thought both a solace and vulnerability, for he was easily trusting and easier betrayed: within, a voice told Basch he had known what Noah spoke so carelessly. Basch might have been coaxing his childish self, for he returned to Noah with arch disbelief:</p>
<p>'You truly think Balthier is as damned as a demon?'</p>
<p>'Damned and a demon. If you doubt, consider: he scalded you as well as I, and no dream leaves a literal mark on a man. Had he been but a shade or restless in his grave, he could not have come upon us in the heart of a temple. No, Basch, grieve again if you will, but the brat died with a tally and he accounts now. Thus, there can only be two reasons for his infernal presence. As I doubt that the Father has freed his Scions to destroy all temporal barriers, someone has directed the words of an invitation to the King of Hell that his minions can walk within these sacred halls.' Noah's warning came too earnest to be truly stern. 'Mind you do not speak his name again. You will call him back, were it not you who called him firstly with some lovesick song.'</p>
<p>Demonic or otherwise, the form and core of that treacherous relief had still been Balthier. Basch spoke deliberately, wanting to spark in Noah something other than this monotone catechism, and this game of blame was an old one between them. 'Yet you called him also, as Ffamran, and more than once.'</p>
<p>'How long has it been since your beloved pirate considered himself as the boy who once came to my arms for comfort? He will not heed Ffamran as his name.'</p>
<p>Noah dressed with a ritual precision, smoothing his underrobe before overlaying his mantle with an obvious gratitude. The plague of shivering left Noah's shoulders calmly aligned. Of a sudden Basch felt ashamed for the anger he strove to release. To his knowledge Noah never sought any such liberation himself, indulging none of his senses, seeking nothing more than that comfort offered by a warmer wear of linen.</p>
<p>'Not so long,' Basch replied, uncertain. He strove for repentance: 'He spoke of you often, and fondly enough.'</p>
<p>'I don't know whether to thank you for offering even that poor comfort, brother, or to remind you that a becoming priest does not lie.'  Clad in righteousness, Noah offered Basch's mantle.</p>
<p>Basch's nails bit into his own wrist before he could will himself to let go and accept. Noah waited as Basch dressed, his eyes downcast. When they left the room Basch kept his pace within his brother's shadow and close, as though he could draw devoutness like heat from a fire.</p>
<p>Basch felt thankful Noah preserved their silence. It was ever safer without words between them, as bare as the blades they had both foresworn.</p>
<p>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <br/>
</p><p>The world after death was a white, sandy plain and a blue sky, precisely two colours and no shades between, neither hot nor cold, and without a single redeeming feature to provoke a memory of life. There was only the centre, where Balthier's new Lord laboured, and the expanse of distance between centre and the theoretical edge, where Balthier fled in lieu of anything profitable to do.</p>
<p>He could still run away, it seemed, though with a lack of direction all such motion proved fruitless.</p>
<p>Without any true recollection of life Balthier relived his death instead, less regretful than irritated with the vagueness of a renegade wife. He remembered the proposal coming as he died: a pale hand stretched for him, offering, —and eternity. No other proposal had ever seemed so attractive.</p>
<p>Balthier could pretend, as he had done for the first part of his reduced existence, that the pain had destroyed his reason and led him to accept that proposal. Lying to himself had ceased to be amusing a long time ago. With great reluctance and as infrequently as possible, Balthier remembered how the pain had sharpened his thoughts instead to a crystalline clarity, cutting his desperate fingers to fringed tatters and offering naught but a truly painful realization on which to cling: this, this is how the skypirate Balthier would die, a wretched broken thing.</p>
<p>His courage deserted him at the last, denial burst like the bloody bubble on his lips. Even an animal would have known instinctively to be suspicious of comfort offered in the midst of such pain, snapping at the hand that came to loose the trap. For Balthier, the hand was the only option compared to this rising horror he knew too intimately.</p>
<p>Balthier accepted with both of his hands. He pressed a bloodied kiss to veins and pale skin. His last breath was a choked offer of allegiance, one he had spent all his adult life avoiding.</p>
<p>There could be no fate worse than death, not even service.</p>
<p>Balthier considered his dying determination with the so-called benefit of hindsight. He knew now a fate worse than death involved two things, and of those two things he was suddenly possessed of abundance: boredom and eternity. Both were his reward for his vanity.</p>
<p>Initially his new Lord did not offer Balthier much solace, being busy or otherwise derelict in his duties. Balthier lay in his rotting flesh for long enough to witness the scavenging coeurls that came after his final battle. They hollowed out his abdomen from the groin upwards, putting great cat-fish heads inside his ribcage to find what reward lay therein, invading all cavities with tongue and tentacle. Balthier was mortified with the horror until he realized there was no pain, and then he was vaguely content. Let the coeurls take what they could. No man would ever call Balthier ungenerous: at least the coeurls would not starve.</p>
<p>Eventually his Lord gave him new form, coalesced out of Mist and given meaning. Balthier chose to have that substance mirror what he used to inhabit. He could admit his self-perception after death more favourable than the actuality had been in life, all minor asymmetries of his features and form smoothed to unreal perfection. Balthier's vanity had killed him, and his vanity gave him this half-life after death to suffer: and Balthier had ever been one to flaunt his flaws as peacock virtues.</p>
<p>The only mirrored surfaces in this world proved his Lord's eyes, and the metallic device of his Lord's labour. Balthier avoided looking at both: he could not recall the original colour of his eyes, and suspected if he met his Lord's coal-black gaze that they would prove twinned in color and lack of depth.</p>
<p>For Balthier the situation of his boredom soon became unbearable. For a time his wings provided sufficient amusement, allowing him to explore the great expanse of impossible desert that was his new realm. It was a strange nostalgic grief that grounded Balthier: his own flippant amusement at his new flight ability disturbed him. Once he would have sold the world in order to fly. His memories of life felt as far away as his childhood, but a vague guilt told him he nearly did sell his father, all in exchange for possessing the Strahl's mechanical wings. That Balthier could fly now and merely chuckle at his own delight seemed near sacrilegious.</p>
<p>Regardless of the distance he sought to achieve, Balthier always returned to the centre, drawn by the terms of his service.</p>
<p>At the centre, his Lord's labours stayed undefined, and Balthier knew his own assistance more a hindrance. The device failed to provoke Balthier's interest and instead stimulated his avoidance. In the transition that took him from his rotting flesh, Balthier lost something more pertinent, more valuable than meat and bone. The coeurls must have digested his creativity, for when boredom drove Balthier to try he found himself unable put even two stones atop a third in a way that bore any stability. Within his mind he carried the memory of schematics, paths, tools, applications, but Balthier's hands and mind could not form the link to turn thought, idea and skill into reality.</p>
<p>This inability would have frustrated Balthier once, but death successfully claimed Balthier's ability for enthusiasm, his caring. Balthier lounged on a bed wrought of his wings, perturbed if but mildly. He contemplated his lack objectively but could not find satisfaction.</p>
<p>'Ho, Lord—'</p>
<p>'Your soul,' Vayne answered, absently, 'tis the lack you so lament.'</p>
<p>'Do you read minds, seraph?'</p>
<p>Vayne looked up from his design. It was spinning now, worlds within worlds, and had not been before. Gyroscopic: Balthier wrapped his mind around the word, pleased he recalled it and determined to cling, but determination and word could not hold against his ennui.</p>
<p>Balthier yawned. He stroked his pure-white primaries, contemplating their shimmering flawlessness, both pleased and displeased to be so graced with perfection. Surely they complimented him; but perhaps they instead overwhelmed him. He could not be sure.</p>
<p>When Vayne spoke again, it startled Balthier from his reverie. 'You've asked before, Balthier.' The seraph's eyes were blank coals; Balthier remembered he disliked meeting that gaze too late for avoidance. 'Many times before. From your terrestrial behaviour I presumed the lack of a soul would not disturb you. Had I known your dependence on the thing, I would have reconsidered when I offered you my hand.'</p>
<p>Balthier wrinkled his brow, confused. 'You needed my aid, you said. Not my soul.'</p>
<p>Vayne corrected him. 'I need your father's aid, but failed to reconstruct his consciousness from the morass of Mist. I opted for his heir.'</p>
<p>'Being called that…once… would have,' Balthier considered, straining, 'warmed me, I think.'</p>
<p>Vayne stopped tinkering for long enough to push back raven wings of hair. He smiled, a strangely pleasant expression, as though his years of complete isolation had convinced him to let go of all his statecraft. 'Is this Balthier, understating a fact? As I recollect, being so called warmed you, sparked you to anger, and drove you to great lengths to prove yourself worthy of being so named. Conversely, and simultaneously, you lived in such fear of being unworthy you defied your father's every whim purposely to avoid the chance of proving incapable.'</p>
<p>'That was my life? How self-spitefully complicated of me.'</p>
<p>'You mastered spiteful self-complication long before other youths mastered their boot-laces.'</p>
<p>'It seems much simpler now, soulless. How is it that you avoid my indolence?'</p>
<p>Vayne did not sound sad so much as resigned. He regarded his design, long fingers still. 'It always is simpler, without a soul. Rationality can prevail over conceptualization of the individual's worth. When people are abstract concepts, all decisions are rendered black and white; as black as my wings, as white as yours. I have no regrets, for I have no soul, nor did I have one when I walked Ivalice. My focus is ever on concepts, not individuals, and death shall not alter my will. '</p>
<p>That took Balthier by surprise, because he had thought Vayne incapable of a direct answer. Such was less Vayne's incapability, Balthier realized, than his own inability ever to hear directness for truth. For Balthier, words were a veil for meaning, not a vehicle.</p>
<p>The silence that fell enabled seraph and servant a kind of passive communion. Balthier allowed himself to doze, absently answering Vayne's queries with inarticulate nonsense. He could have become a part of this bare terrain, the white sand and blue sky, the unbroken horizon; his wings spread to cover the false earth. His mind, what was left, became as unfocused as his intentions. It was only irritation at his inability to answer his Lord's questions that kept Balthier from dissolving entirely into the timeless frieze.</p>
<p>After however many days, Balthier sat up.</p>
<p>'Lord,' Balthier said, 'help me.'</p>
<p>'You owe me service, Balthier, in exchange for what remnant of your self remains whole. Would you fall even more into debt?'</p>
<p>A mild panic filled Balthier: what would happen if he did lose himself altogether? Surely any debt, even eternity could be borne if he could repay it as himself. His will must be stronger than it seemed: 'I cannot aid nor repay you as I am.' He coaxed his Lord: 'With my soul back, I could serve in any capacity you desired.'</p>
<p>'I did not take it from you, death did that.' Vayne glanced at him as though suddenly remembering past reasoning. 'You have ever had the heart of a sensualist, and cannot maintain your sense of self without your sins on which to cling. If you would craft a new persona, get you to Ivalice and blacken your wings.'</p>
<p>Balthier experienced the briefest sensation of joy, overwhelming. He would be relieved with Vayne removed from his sight, and thus his thought. 'I can go back?'</p>
<p>In response Vayne looked so remote it might as well be that Balthier did not exist on this same sandy plain as he. 'If someone calls you, you may.'</p>
<p>'And I must –sin? To recover my soul?'</p>
<p>'Aye,' Vayne said, but contrarily shook his head. 'But that does miss the point. It is not your soul you will be recovering – that is lost, much like objectivity, after death. But Balthier as I knew him was a person who defined himself by the sins he would willingly commit, the sins he would reluctantly perform, and the sins he would never acknowledge existed. Hence, go to Ivalice and redefine yourself in your customary manner that you can be of some use to me.'</p>
<p>Balthier stood and swept the sand with his wings, bowing. Gratitude felt strange without a sense of obligation behind it, but he supposed he had neither soul nor conscience to demand that latter. 'Lord. But are you not suspicious I'll use this freedom to abscond?'</p>
<p>Vayne held out his hand, pale and slender yet highly capable, as Balthier remembered it from his last few seconds of life, and vaguely, from before. Vayne's conduct lent Balthier courage; he knelt and put his lips to those proffered knuckles. Vayne was beneficent, for turned to bare his inner wrist and allowed Balthier's kiss to linger there.</p>
<p>'You cannot abscond. Your vow to me is the only thing that keeps your current sense of self whole, for why else do you always return to me? Break your word, and sunder your self from what remains. You must trust your instincts, Balthier, or what remains. You were never a man who broke his own word, though you did dedicate yourself to breaking the given word of others.'</p>
<p>Vayne's tone was flat enough to contain no bargaining room. Balthier would be gambling against his own survival to attempt to defect against his Lord, and his last gambit to put his life on the line had not served him meritoriously. Vayne read him right. Balthier would not abscond.</p>
<p>'I shall do my best to behave as I am expected to. Lord, your faith in my abilities will be repaired.'</p>
<p>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <br/>
</p><p>Balthier's inclination for solitude had been abandoned with his childhood. He had never recovered it.</p>
<p>He departed his Lord's black shadow to navigate alone with an unexpectedly heavy consideration. The impossible desert did not daunt him, but rather it was sucking ennui that threatened all his resolve.</p>
<p>Surely distance was as much a symbol here as the semblance of flesh Balthier wore. He suspected he could have returned to the corporeal realm without a single step taken. Regardless, he had ever been one to regard motion as action, and a man's actions the only legitimate symbol of his inner self. Balthier decided each step in a single direction would symbolize a return to him of purpose, and thus he firmed his resolve to reach his eventual destination.</p>
<p>Balthier did not fly. If he were to play the part of a sinner, his great white wings would not suit such a role. <br/>Once he had identified this, the itch for corrective action was such Balthier could not but stop and correct himself. Concentration re-sculpted his feathered wings into a form more suited to his intent.</p>
<p>Balthier knew little of the symbolism of his change beyond the superficial resemblance to the Scion Adrammelech's wings.</p>
<p>As a child, Balthier did not study in any depth the Light's symbolic incarnations, the Kiltias' belief of an afterlife, the recycling of souls and the Divine Pantheon that should have welcomed him post-death. Balthier sensed Vayne had powerfully disrupted the rightful course of his death, but Balthier was undisturbed. He was of a different type than to abide by the restrained rituals of churchmen. A skypirate found his sacrament in the sky, in the springwater drunk on the hunt, the fleeting passion he left on altars wrought of mattress and pillow. His body or his lover's served as temple, worshipped with presence or as memory. Balthier needed no architecture of faith for his assurance.</p>
<p>Perhaps such a lack of faith was the source of his fear. Would he have had the strength to reject Vayne's proposal, had he felt his death not so casually purposeless?</p>
<p>Balthier was comforted now that he remained in possession of his body enough to command each step forward. The blank boredom of this land seemingly designed for his torment; this pure whiteness was beautiful, but hostile. Balthier imagined threatening shapes at his periphery, and that by not turning to acknowledge their existence, he could prove himself stronger. The fantasy did not sustain him for long, or perhaps he could not sustain fantasy. The horizon wavered to match Balthier's resolve.</p>
<p>Balthier continued regardless. The sharp shadow of his wings stretched before him, and captivated him.</p>
<p>Despite his fogged nostalgia, Balthier remembered experiencing both admiration and curiosity at Adrammelech's form, for irrespective of superficial similarity, the Scion's wings proved quite unlike a wyvern's span, near delicate and highly sculptural. After pages of elaborate sketches during his scant spare time, Balthier had concluded with some disappointment the Scion flew on wings of faith, not science. He had abandoned all his fanciful schematics, but in this realm, the only laws existing were self-imposed. Death was no barrier to dreaming.</p>
<p>Balthier suspected he walked a spiral.</p>
<p>The first significant change in the landscape occurred when Balthier heard his name.</p>
<p>A curl of water threaded through the scape, scarce a finger wide but thickening to swallow Balthier's feet. He stepped back. He was afflicted with dread that his single move to retreat compromised all his forward motion. He resolved not to move again: the water felt exactly as did the sand, but inflicted his skin with a susurrus of motion.<br/><i><br/>…give a damn, Ffamran?</i></p>
<p>Balthier felt only remotely related to the man he had once been. He was probably closer to the unformed boy that this name evoked.</p>
<p>The stream was a river, the banks green-grassed. Balthier widened his eyes at the chill, for the water was as high – higher than his waist and threatening his nipples. He flared his wings, but in this form he could not fly, as terrestrial as an earth-born man and as inflicted with impotent limbs. His shadow on the river's surface was dark and broad, with flame at the eyes.</p>
<p>At the third such call, Balthier recognized the caller and the desperation prompting the call.</p>
<p>A countless unfurling of memories and small despites flooded Balthier's mind with anguish, and he remembered what regret weighed. For a long moment he wondered if recovering himself could be worthy of this torment. But of course it could. His life had been spent in effort to define himself. He would not let his death mock his life's purpose.</p>
<p>Balthier pressed his palms together, a supplicating prayer form he knew nothing of; he held his hands to his chest, drew in a deep breath, and he dove into the flood quicker than he could lose his grain of reason amidst static sand. <br/>The deeper he swam, the thicker that torrential rain of imagery that threatened to drown both Balthier's despair and intentions. In the end all fragments of form resolved to a single image, and a single man who whispered Balthier's true name: Noah. Balthier watched him, first as though he stared still through a veil of water. Between one breath and the next, it was as though Balthier stood in that very room. With a strange manic glee Balthier realized himself recovered, returned, and with a weight to his fleshiness that he entirely lacked in Vayne's created hell. He did stand in that room, of cold stone and small openings, smelling the rankness of heavy furs and heavier men, both the worse for the lack of air movement within the cell.</p>
<p>But for the presence of a few luxuries: books, scrolls, a shaving blade and a second bunk, and most tellingly a door handle on this side of the door, Balthier would have thought Noah bound in a prison cell.</p>
<p>Resurgent memory told Balthier the faint sharpness he scented was the ghost of snow, thickened with mildew. He gave the chill no respect, for he burned with a reminiscent, unabated heat.</p>
<p>Noah knelt nude.</p>
<p>Noah prayed with archness clear in his austerity, as though performing. It was strange considering Noah's belief he knelt alone, yet nudity for this Ronsenburg had always been a matter of extreme self-consciousness, emblematic of his humility and restraint. Noah was quite unlike his brother. Basch had always walked with a compelling unawareness of his own physical presence that had made of him an intolerable flame for the erratic moth of Balthier's desire.</p>
<p>Balthier noted with mild interest that Noah did not soften his stone floor with carpet or cushions; the penitent knelt with his knees directly on a coiled chain.</p>
<p>His prayers finished, Noah wound the length about his leg with practiced motion, each loop set into a long line of indented blue bruises. Noah bound diagonally across his groin, though even he proved less penitential than to directly restrain his masculine vulnerability. Balthier still flinched, while the part of him that answered to Ffamran peaked with that reminiscent delight more tantalizing than nostalgia.</p>
<p>Around waist and torso Noah pulled his chain to crimp his breath. He wound the last length over his shoulder firmly enough to hunch his height. Once locked within his coil, Noah paused. His expression of pain and resignation firmed to blankness. Noah clipped his serpent's steel another link tighter. But that was not enough: after a pause, he went two links tighter again, shuddering with anguish. His skin released trickles of bright blood.</p>
<p>Ffamran once hungered for this man who thought himself a thing. Balthier's repulsion drowned what attraction Ffamran felt for another's excess. Such was Noah's humility that it drove him always to be more visibly humble than the next man.</p>
<p>Noah had evidently been monologuing his suffering as he prayed, for he continued, agonised: 'I have never been more than an unhappy dog wanting for a new leash and chain. I do not know whether to envy you your freedom, Ffamran, or despise you for longing for such a thing. What did I teach you, that I could not teach myself?'</p>
<p>The stab of misery Balthier experienced could not have been sharper had he been alive. Of everyone who had once depended on him, he had failed his once-mentor in the cruelest of ways, with his success. Balthier wondered if Noah would feel at all consoled to know Balthier's freedom had not extended past death. A different dog, Balthier thought, but the same master.</p>
<p>Noah dressed at a speed that did not dispel their silently shared air of melancholy. Layered robes concealed all sign of the chain, while the chain's very tightness prohibited a clinking sound.</p>
<p>The revelation struck Balthier with force: Noah dressed himself in the robes of a Kiltias priest.</p>
<p>'Noah.' A knock on a narrow wooden door preceded its opening by scarcely a heartbeat. Basch ducked his head to look through that low portal. His breath fogged in the cold. 'Our supper waits, but will not if you won't hasten.'<br/>Balthier noted, considering, that Basch also wore the robes of a Kiltias priest.</p>
<p>It occurred to Balthier that out of all Ivalice, his presence betwixt these two was not by chance.</p>
<p>The twins had shaped Balthier's life in undeniable ways. Alive, such a thing generated only Balthier's vague gratitude. Balthier could not imagine what heights their corruption could wring from him. Both brothers had turned to a Light-sworn life in recompense for what their unspoken feud had wrought on the world.</p>
<p>Balthier recalled Vayne's last words: that Balthier had never been one to break his own word, only ever the word of others.</p>
<p>It seemed only moot then that Balthier define himself anew by striving to break a priest's sworn vows. What greater sin could there be for an individual to commit, than to encourage a man to break his sworn word? At some level Balthier admitted he deserved to be lost if he sought to define himself with the downfall of priests and righteous men. <br/>Yet the very thought of it stimulated Balthier's interest to a nearly corporeal level.</p>
<p>His tail lashed.</p>
<p>Only belatedly did he wonder when he had acquired such a thing.</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
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</p><p>Now unwatched (for Balthier's methodology of plotting was customarily convoluted) Noah fought briefly. His body sought to assert itself against his self-imposed chain. Unable to reduce the pain, Noah gave himself up to it inside his clothes.</p>
<p>By chance his last shudder had his eyes open while directed to the palm-sized shaving mirror he kept set for use. What he saw there drenched him with a cold that had him forget the presence of his restraint.</p>
<p>Had his nightmares spawned reality? Had his judgment found him at last, in even this most holy of amnesty grounds? Noah spun too swiftly and was unable to hide his gasp, for the pain was significant. As it was intended to be, Noah reminded himself, for he was not permitted to rely on the strength of his warrior's body when he sought instead to serve peace. <br/>The pain did as it was supposed to, and left Noah's vision clear of imagining: nothing stood at his shoulder. Noah sweated regardless, each droplet turned chill in scant seconds. He could not find sufficient bravery to glance at the mirror again and looked instead at his brother. No sign of disturbance showed on Basch's expression, only the mannered irritation of a hungry man.</p>
<p>'Will you come?' Basch asked, striving to contain his patience. 'I will go without—'</p>
<p>Whether Basch would go without his brother or without his supper, Noah left to imagining, for before he could discover Basch's priorities he interrupted. 'Aye, I thought I saw a shadow behind me, a demon's form, in the mirror. It proved just an unfortunate shadow, and I the fool for trusting my sight.'</p>
<p>Basch inched towards a gruff conciliation. 'You've gone white. Which was it this time, Drace? Or Vayne?'</p>
<p>Noah shook his head and avoided Basch's seeking hand. His whiteness was less of shock than pain. 'Nay, neither. I saw just the wings, the demonic form. The mirror is not large enough for revelation. In any case it was just a shadow, hovering, no doubt my own cast on the wall courtesy of the lantern. The angle is correct, you see?'</p>
<p>Basch's suspicion showed in the mocking breadth of his smile, but he let his outstretched hand fall.</p>
<p>Loathe to show any sign of discomfort, Noah returned a likewise too-wide grin.</p>
<p>In lieu of any true communication, only this exaggerated candor could exist between them.</p>
<p>The days following Balthier's arrival stretched into a long penitence of displacement activity, for Balthier lingered. He appeared where Noah least longed for him to do so; in dreams, through studies, disrupting meditations and instruction both.</p>
<p>Noah ignored the demon, resilient, but reality refused to comply with Noah's beliefs.</p>
<p>Basch appeared so grateful for the company Balthier grew visibly pleased with himself.</p>
<p>The tension dissolved at last into a blizzard. The temple's compound paling provided sufficient protection to turn blanketing whiteness to a veil instead, barely enough to reduce Basch's smugness to an appearance of blurred innocence. <br/>Cold and exhaustion had Noah shaking beneath his robes, his imposed incapability making every swing of the ax a torment. Basch worked away merrily enough, for as long the woodpile grew his labour served purpose, and Basch deplored only purposelessness.</p>
<p>Perched atop an uncut log, the demon watched them, grooming himself. Every time Balthier extended his wings, the snow falling about him turned instead to a sparkling rain.</p>
<p>Noah frowned away his emotions. Had the visibility been clear enough, his fingers would have shown blanched about the haft of his ax, to which he clung as though the tool could provide him with support.</p>
<p>The interview with their superior had offered little solace but for the swift healing of their scorchmarks. Noah had bound his faith in the ability of others to know where he could not, yet with the demon Noah was abandoned to suffer his own whim, or, as the sacerdos reprimanded him sternly, to learn his own limits. Every man has his personal demons, the sacerdos had indicated, quite blind to Balthier's agreeable presence at his shoulder. Demons tempt, but it is men who fall or fight free. The Gran Kiltias had dreamed no great disturbance in the nether realms that adjoined Ivalice. Subsequently, it was ruled Balthier's presence was purely individual whim, thus entirely their individual responsibility.</p>
<p>Their ordination had been suspended pending resolution. The ruling increased Noah's distress. The demon invaded a private world, as insensitive as Balthier had been alive, and distressingly good-natured for all his evil. But all temptation was attractive, even the basest kind; Noah reminded himself of this especially in the mornings, when a shower of iced water scarcely sluiced away the dreams.</p>
<p>Noah's secret guilt was that the dreams of Balthier's crafting did not come as nightmares. He had slept better for a few nights than he had since Bahamut's fall. Balthier chose to appear tauntingly youthful, younger even than Ffamran had been at the time Noah first claimed his virtues. The demon wore shoulder-length curls for this performance, and a pale skin ruddy as though from a bath and a brisk toweling in front of a fire, clothed in health, life, and an insolence longing for a firm hand applied liberally across rosy cheeks.</p>
<p>Noah learned to find what rest he could with his restraining chain fastened tight.</p>
<p>'I could not very well become jealous of an ax,' Balthier told Noah, 'but that with how closely you hold it, swinging and plunging and sweating and grunting, I suspect a secret affair. Have you ever held a lover as close as you hold your weapons?'</p>
<p>Noah had vowed to ignore the demon's presence, but Basch was always bound to conversation by camaraderie. 'Tis not a weapon, Balthier; we foreswore our right to wield.'</p>
<p>'Yet the pair of you were always so well suited to action! Howsoever ugly you appeared through the strain of killing, there was a beauty in your relaxation after, resting sweaty and thoughtless.'  Balthier hummed, quite obscenely, in reminiscence.</p>
<p>'Thoughtless, but not remorseless.' Basch chided gently, further softened with a smile.</p>
<p>Noah interjected a mouth of spittle into the snow. A demon flattered his brother, and his brother swallowed it whole. Basch must have regretted it himself, for he was ashamed enough to colour.</p>
<p>'Enough ferreting around in thoughts and snow; Noah, let us inside. The elements are scarce conducive even for penance.'<br/>Noah was driven to exclaim, 'You exchange gossip with a demon and dare to call it penance? What do you hope to find inside the temple, a shady corner in which to exchange profane fluids as well?'</p>
<p>Basch's lips thinned with desperation. 'I would not act so callous,' Basch said, with a sincerity Noah did not doubt.  (All of Balthier's substance seared.)  'Did we not vow that all our actions would be decided together?'</p>
<p>'Oho,' Balthier said, 'physical as well as spiritual freedom, where two wrongs might equal a right through the simple justification of numbers, and the age-old argument: but he did it too, and first!'</p>
<p>Noah shouted, kicking an arc of snow that vaporised prior to reaching his target. 'Why must you continually mock me? For days you swap affections with my brother in my very presence!'</p>
<p>But that was not what Noah intended to say. Admitting jealousy to a demon was merely offering another weapon. Noah's overwhelming impulse was to escape, but he could see no avenue. There was only temporary retreat. Noah surrendered his ax and brought his hands together. 'I want nothing more than my privacy returned! Begone, demon, in the name of the Light!'</p>
<p>Affronted, Balthier folded his wings. The curves that showed above his shoulders appeared a youthful defensive hunch. Noah affected not to see Basch's remorse.</p>
<p>'You could ask,' Balthier said, with a hurt a demon could surely only feign. 'You must recognize Ffamran's obedience to your particular demands died a long time before I did.'</p>
<p>The demon faded, leaving only a melancholic mist and the sudden resurgent cold.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
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</p><p>Earlier, Basch discovered that setting his shoulders a-flame with his own preference for penance did little, instead provoking Balthier's curiosity. ('But you had no penchant for flagellation when we traveled together,' the once-pirate's breath warmed fever-chilled shoulders, the tip of a tail drafting constitutions between Basch's thighs, 'would it please you should I wield the whip next time?') Basch sought advice, and in Noah's absence. It was unfortunate that Noah's presence often compromised any advice offered, for anything offered in good-faith merely revived Noah's sense of authority.</p>
<p>The sacerdos considered Basch's desperation for a long time before responding. 'Yet you feel no guilt for your lust.'</p>
<p>'I am a military man, father, whatever robes I wear. Anything indulged to excess is harmful, including denial; when my actions do not affect another, I cannot see that I should withhold. I have done so for Noah's sake, and am old enough to feel little need to indulge myself. But I – this is Balthi—'</p>
<p>'You must not call him. Do you care for your brother's wellbeing?'</p>
<p>'I care for my brother's wellbeing.' Basch repeated it so quickly it sounded false.</p>
<p>'You make…a good priest.' The sacerdos reclined on the tide of his own words. 'Save your disbelieving glower for your beloved demon, if you please. You have an honest approval for each individual you meet, a desire to see everyone achieve the best of their capabilities. You are fallible, and certainly not as studious as your brother, nor even as committed to the Light: but you have a belief in people, and for what else does a man set aside his own humanity but to uplift another's? Your brother, conversely, believes in concepts, in rules, and reviles his own mortality. How could he but revile another's? His self-faith is built on fragile ground.'</p>
<p>That anonymous male voice summed all Basch's ambiguous conception of his brother, concisely. Basch was not given the time to voice his surprise at the priest's observation, for it was followed with a rattling accusation:</p>
<p>'Think you Noah could withstand further demonic visitation? Or would he succumb, and thus fall back into the pit of self-hatred from which he has so painstakingly climbed? You nursed him through the fever of his guilt following Bahamut's fall. Consider now how your actions affect Noah.'</p>
<p>'I will be wary for Noah's sake.'</p>
<p>Yet close relationships rarely mended once fate and distance were able to work their evils.</p>
<p>Of his brother Basch remembered perfect summer days as though through a fog, he a voyeur, the pair of adventurous blond boys strangers. Of Balthier Basch remembered more: a cheek rasping against his own, the stunning sensuality of the pirate's arched spine, of his competence; they would wrestle like brothers when bored at camp, after dusk with further intimacy. Lust had never been an enemy to resist when they shared greater enemies.</p>
<p>Basch's flogger did not serve to defend against the onslaught of immodest thought. He set it aside.</p>
<p>The blizzard came many days after Balthier's first appearance. The Mount's blizzards fell like blankets, white noise ceaseless and isolating. Basch woke into an unexpected heat and he thought himself for a moment back in Dalmasca, where stone walls radiated heat and comfort to ward against chill nights. The stone of the temple was far more perversely applied, radiating only chill and mildew, and occasionally efflorescence.</p>
<p>Basch's shoulders were still raw, but not wounded. He admitted to himself he embraced the half-ritualised floggings of priestly tradition: it was one action which returned temporary sensation to that flesh once-overwhelmed, left numbed.<br/>Balthier's fingers and feathers alike set that raw flesh to flame.</p>
<p>As he had said every other night but for that first, Basch whispered: 'Balthier, please stop.'</p>
<p>'Noah dreams,' the demon said, distantly. His knees pressed on either side of Basch's ribs, buttocks nestled distractingly in the lower curve of Basch's back. In the absence of a heart, Balthier's tail beat an intemperate rhythm into bundled blankets. 'I can't reach him except through fantasy. He'll not wake.'</p>
<p>'I missed you,' Basch told his furs, 'when you died. Even before, immediately after we parted I started to miss you. Tell me how this is different. I will find some small comfort, you will depart, and this time this bridge so painstakingly built with my brother will be thoroughly destroyed.'</p>
<p>'Small! I can offer more than that.'</p>
<p>'I do not know if you will drag me into damnation, I nearly do not care, but Noah does. I resist for his sake, Balthier.'</p>
<p>The demon cried out in anguish. 'But what about for my sake!'</p>
<p>The cry was that of a lost child. Basch was alarmed, and tried to break the mood with a chuckle that choked on its own death. 'I should care for a demon's sentiment?'</p>
<p>'But Noah named me that! Demon.' Balthier was notably distressed, with a pitch in his voice that suggested an incongruous moral distress. 'The word surpasses the boundary of religion: I thought I knew what it meant. I accepted the naming, but I have wandered the halls here where the art and artifice depicts how I should appear, what role I play, thus how I should behave. But I tell you, Basch, I have no true hellish intent! Selfish, perhaps, but not evil.'<br/>'Tell me what happened when you died.'</p>
<p>'I was afraid. Fear makes all men stupid. I vowed…eternity.'</p>
<p>'...of service? That does not sound like you, to vow to a Lord of Hell.'</p>
<p>Balthier laughed. 'If my Lord could hear you call him such…Basch, I have been released to recall myself. My only chance for self-discovery resides with you two, who have known all my selves. And some stupid moral clause prevents my freedom! Each day in your company I feel more, and more desperate, and dread that if I return without some new memory on which to cling I will fade again into the mist.'</p>
<p>Basch did not fully trust Balthier's exclamation until he asked: 'Did you not think to seek out Fran? She is entirely free of our responsibilities, and cherished you also.'</p>
<p>They lay in silence for a while.</p>
<p>Balthier set his forehead between Basch's shoulderblades and exhaled deliberately.  The tips of horns touched tender skin, and provoked a wave of gooseflesh.</p>
<p>'I…can – I remember her, but only -- Noah called me, Basch, not she. I can only go where I am called.'</p>
<p>Basch fought against Balthier's weight to turn, catching Balthier with his mouth open and his thoughts wide. Balthier's admittance disturbed Basch so deeply he would have dismissed it from memory, if he possessed the skill. It was worse than damnation that Balthier be stripped even of Fran.</p>
<p>Basch's sympathy overwhelmed rationality. He had always weighed another's needs above his own.</p>
<p>'Allow me some conversation with Noah in private. I would – I will help.'</p>
<p>'Anything, Basch. Anything would be an existence more bearable than the service I left behind. I need to feel.' <br/>Balthier took Basch's mouth, voluntarily, as he never did. Basch's prayers for peace had never been more than words pitched without expectation into the void: that kiss offered resolution.  However selfish Balthier's purpose, it would be selflessness on Basch's part.</p>
<p>Basch convinced himself of his righteousness as easily as Balthier lied.</p>
<p>Wary of Balthier's heat, Basch trembled, less so for lust or fear than at the thought of being newly effectual.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
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</p><p>When they were young, Noah found a kind of companionship in Basch's company that few else offered; his brother's presence could but add a benison to Noah's preference for solitude. Basch had an uncaring in him for the opinions of others that soothed his brother as an undemanding balm. When Basch had left Landis Noah voiced no opinion on the matter, but the abandonment ended Noah's childhood. To please and protect became Noah's purpose. His reasoning was never admitted, but his core self believed that had he been stronger, better able to protect, and wholly bent to pleasing, Basch would have stayed.</p>
<p>But Noah had ever been one to form unmerited opinions of others.</p>
<p>Of his brother's adolescent image, Noah formed an idol brimful of health and life. He worshipped at the altar of youth, guiltily, for he had been a devout child. When Ffamran was delivered into Noah's protection he found the youth's anxiety complimented his initial charm. By chance their first meeting was on the Akademy's training track, where Ffamran's training shirt left his shoulders bare and gleaming, lips blushing with recent exertion, auburn hair falling with a studied casualness which left his forehead engagingly exposed.</p>
<p>Perhaps Noah had dreamed he could find his salvation if he assured Ffamran's way held true according to Archadian convention: if Ffamran served duty, exactly as Basch had not.</p>
<p>What Noah dreamed now was but the demon's manipulation of all his best intentions towards idolised youth.</p>
<p>'We could go on,' the demon piped, tail and claw toying with Noah's frayed chain. 'An eternity like this, Noah. You find your righteousness in your resistance. Am I doing anything here but granting your fondest wish: that you prove yourself stronger than even a demon? Would you prefer I appear as Basch desires me?' Balthier shifted in the manner of dreams. Sungilt turned him swarthy, the lines at the corners of his eyes maps of all he had seen. His features appeared sharper, surlier, Ffamran's youthful openness becoming Balthier's wary cynicism. The demon stood half a head taller than Noah now, and took advantage of this as he sought intimate proximity.</p>
<p>Noah hissed his resistance. The demon's laugh was falsely pained.</p>
<p>'Can you never regard another man as your equal? Must there always be this master and servant, slave and desire; is it inequality you long for rather than youth?' Plucking at the chain still, the demon's claw found a twisted link and strained to break it. 'You could pray for freedom instead of servitude. There is worth in that.'</p>
<p>'Freedom cannot escape abstraction. It is not a concept that benefits indulgence in reality.'</p>
<p>'I pity you,' the demon mused, whether malevolently or in sympathy. His hand inveigled space between Noah's flesh and the chain, and coaxed response. 'Yet you helped me find my freedom once before. I can hardly remember, nor express in words, but – Noah, your resistance bothers me. Please help me. I can give you what you truly want.'</p>
<p>But what Noah wanted was not worthy of indulgence any more than freedom was. He suffered Balthier's adult attentions with a studied disinterest. He had become used to the dull black gaze of the demon, static in a face full of expression, so Balthier's genuine rage surprised him.</p>
<p>'You called me a demon but you called me first: call me then Ffamran, or Balthier, but I am no demon! I am dead, departed, and all my selves are lost. If I am ever to break free of my Lord, I need your help!'</p>
<p>'You cannot give me anything I want, Balthier. You cannot take back time, you cannot offer me the forgiveness of dead men, you cannot give me back my brother!'</p>
<p>Noah could not help but notice how ineffectual his voice sounded when he attempted to defend. Balthier's agreeable turn filled Noah with suspicion.</p>
<p>'True, true, Noah. But you forget the capabilities of my Lord Vayne, though—'</p>
<p>It was precisely then that Basch decided to wake his brother.</p>
<p>A bell rang; the blizzard added distance to all sounds and sensations, so that even Basch's words dragged through the space between the brothers.</p>
<p>Sitting on the edge of his bunk as though ready to pull on his boots, Noah was struck suddenly with the superfluity of words between them, as though all their conversations acted as did the blizzard, to blanket all events with distance and numbing cold.</p>
<p>Noah was not pleased to wake. As once his armour had rusted to his form, he suspected beneath sweat-wet robes his restraint was doing the same. 'Spare your attempt at justification, please. We'll help the demon.'</p>
<p>Basch was disbelieving. Understandably, Noah thought, but his mind still rang with Vayne Solidor's name, more a bell than that distant one which marked.</p>
<p>These years of penance had taught Noah how to wear his masks well: when he spoke, all his rage hid beneath the lightness of his tone, his smile.</p>
<p>'Whether he is a demon or a damned soul, it is surely our duty to apply a penance to him to help him absolve his own sins?'</p>
<p>The quirk of Basch's lips could have been anger or amusement. 'You judge him wanting.'</p>
<p>'You cannot deny he wants.' Noah's rage always rendered him resolute. 'Let us end this, Basch.'</p>
<p>That he did not use the word 'farce' in description, Noah attributed to his firm self control.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
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</p><p>The halls of the temple were quiet and poorly lit at night. The brothers fell into a uniform pace as they scaled the extent of what they knew.</p>
<p>They were not aimless in their path. Noah knew of Ffamran's youthful penchant for juxtaposed staging, body and mind remembering illicit liaisons in rooms not theirs with grave consequence had they been discovered. Basch remembered instead the demon's latest infatuation with the art and architecture of the internal chapel, the delivery of a commentary both critical and full of admiration.</p>
<p>They both knew that pursuit was alien to Balthier's nature, he who had been haunted all his life. They went to him without a word exchanged as to his expectation that they would.</p>
<p>The way to the closest altar passed without conversation.</p>
<p>Inwardly, Basch sought to impose some reason on Noah's switch of reasoning. He held out hope that benevolence was the heart of Noah's intentions.</p>
<p>Balthier had lit a multiplicity of candles, an excess that spoke of impossible planning. A domed ceiling capped circular walls, the room painted with a representational cosmos of Ivalice's night sky. The demon stood with his hands clasped behind his back in a manner reminiscent of a musing scientist, his wings wide against their entry. He examined the murals with a manner just as carefully studied. Basch would have smiled at Balthier's conceit had his eyes not been drawn to the lashing tail, the gleam of golden horns, and the unexpected motion at his side as Noah stepped forth. <br/>Noah smiled, indulgently for him. Basch knew then the extent of his brother's anger, for this mask was an unkind one. <br/>'Well, demon, we are here to serve your will – or is it the will of your Lord we serve?'</p>
<p>Balthier turned and drew his wings tight across his chest, like a shawl. His smile made Basch bow his head against the anticipation. 'You will help, Noah? And Basch, of course Basch. Your penchant for assistance is well known.'</p>
<p>Noah walked a measured pace through the candles, the path of the traditional priestly procession. 'In a dream, Balthier chanced let slip he now serves my once-Lord Vayne Solidor. How do you assess the truth of that claim, brother?'</p>
<p>Noah's fingers pinched out a candle's flame. Basch met Balthier's eyes and could find only shadow. He swallowed against the pinch in his throat and recovered himself quick. Small wonder Noah's stride came crippled if Balthier had evoked that name, when the nightmares had left Noah with more scars than battle.</p>
<p>But if Balthier spoke true –</p>
<p>Basch delved his hard-learned catechism. 'We are taught there is a world that stands between ours and true death, a world of illusion where Mist runs thick. Vayne's body was never recovered, and he descended into a turmoil of Mist. And it would justify Balthier's substance,' Basch flushed, 'scalding, for a creature constructed of Mist would boil under the pressures of this earth, like the core of an entite. Balthier, if this is true – if Vayne survived to plot in some form of cognizance!—'</p>
<p>'He did not!' Noah yelped like a pup caught between bark and bite, his fingers suddenly tight, sculpting warmed wax to the imprint of his fist. 'You grant the demon the benefit of doubt? Vayne Solidor fell, and Balthier resurrects headless ghosts to toy with me. Know this: I will not be made a demon's plaything again!'</p>
<p>With wings wide across the white-draped altar the demon faced his aggressor, suddenly nude in the manner of dreams. Basch could not move through what followed, aghast, yet strangely fascinated, for Balthier likewise did not resist a use the living man would have fought to avoid.</p>
<p>Noah's hand moved with surprising capability considering the years he had discouraged himself from using it. Perhaps Balthier bowed to Noah's intention, willingness masking ineffectiveness; Noah did not have to push him hard to make him fall back. With a whorish slant towards ease Balthier had disdained, the demon kept his knees spread and his gaze interested, and narrow hips bucked into that insult formed of wax Noah thrust instead of offering his body.</p>
<p>The scent of wax was familiar to Basch from attending services, now turned irrevocably obscene.</p>
<p>Clad in righteous robes Noah's breath came in desperate grunts, as though he, not the demon, were being punished with this pace.</p>
<p>Basch still held passive through this act, which howsoever it appeared like lovemaking he knew for an argument. He had been used as an object in another's feud too many a time, had learned to endure for his own sake; he wondered if he could admit it was selfishness that kept him from approaching. Noah's words resonated.</p>
<p>Basch, too, would not be used again.</p>
<p>'You wanted to feel,' Noah panted, 'will you not scream for me, Balthier? Let us know you have some feeling! Will you beg our pardons: will that free you from your demonic chain?'</p>
<p>But under Noah's assault, Balthier changed again, this time in the manner of a nightmare: he wore the sweet, milk-pale face of what might have been a cherub from the surrounding murals, a child's plump limbs kicking as he made a strained sound and bemoaned, 'Oh, the pain, oh, so dreadful, you'll kill me with your waxy blade! Take pity, elder brother, take pity!'</p>
<p>Noah swore (and Basch noted distantly his brother also did that forbidden act with unexpected fluency), and stepped back, to hurl his used candle away. The ruck of his mantle hindered his retreat; he stepped on the hem, stumbling backwards, and tipped a candelabra.</p>
<p>They had all been long ago conditioned not to flinch at the sound of iron striking stone; it was the echo of a swordfight, and as familiar as suffering.</p>
<p>The cherub rose from the altar, obscene youth marked with sex, yet it was Ffamran who came in pursuit, grinning adolescent mischief with one hand rubbing between buttocks, and Balthier who set that very hand against Noah's chest to hold him against the wall, tail curving an insolent question. But Balthier was not done demonstrating his selves: Basch watched the burst of grey that flowered from Balthier's temples, the genetic thickening of his form with age.</p>
<p>For a moment Basch fought against a displaced nostalgia. Even had Balthier lived, the pirate was not a man Basch could have grown old with as a companion. Noah's face was a mask of horror: to him, it would appear another Bunansa ghost sought to defile him.</p>
<p>Toppled candles were still in motion across the floor, propelled by inertia of form against all other applicable forces.<br/>'Well, dog?' Balthier spoke, in a voice not his own. 'Have any more swords you want to try against me?'</p>
<p>'This will stop.'</p>
<p>Basch did not know he spoke until both his brother and Balthier turned towards him. Not until then did Basch allow himself to contemplate the dangers with which he might be faced: Balthier was Balthier again, but his eyes were unknowable.</p>
<p>'No.' Each word felt less grotesque, until Basch found himself able to move towards the pair, demon and priest, brother and lover. 'Noah, your rage is unjustified, and Balthier wrong to match it in pursuit. I know you called him here: you must have cared for him. You must have had a reason.'</p>
<p>'He called me Ffamran,' Balthier said, 'and do you want to know why, Basch? I have so many selves but Noah dreams only of that one, at sixteen. Do you want to know why Noah dreams of young Ffamran, of humiliating him?' Balthier's smile was wry, but directed at Basch personally. 'Noah is not brave enough to dream you in my place.'</p>
<p>Balthier spoke the words without additional emphasis. Against the strain of their circumstance Basch would have missed the demon's meaning had not Noah collapsed, a puppet suddenly without strings.</p>
<p>The pity on Balthier's face was honest and hume, Basch would have sworn by it. But it was not love.</p>
<p>'The whole world burned for that, Noah. You almost let the whole world burn simply to keep that hurt a secret.'<br/>Basch denied the demon. 'No one is to blame for what happened, Noah.'</p>
<p>'Everyone is to blame for what happened,' Noah said into his palms.</p>
<p>'But that means the same thing: everyone and no one, and the blame lies on all and none. You should suffer no more or less than another man.' Basch knelt beside his brother. 'No matter the reasons behind your involvement.'</p>
<p>Balthier quoth, in a voice grown numb to hurt, and that could not care for offence: 'All wars are evil. The men who fight them are not.  Of the men who start and end them, history has many names.'</p>
<p>Noah seemed so dazed by the situation he could not answer, each breath a visible effort. When he started to speak, it was with the distance of a storm in his voice, and Basch the sailed ship denied the right to a direction.</p>
<p>'Do you remember,' Noah whispered, 'brother: the summer we turned six, and the sunsets of that season?'</p>
<p>Basch spoke assent, and lied as he did so.</p>
<p>More than anything, his solicitude for his brother outweighed his concern for bruised oaths.</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
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</p><p>With the remote hope of catching a glimpse of true sky Balthier glanced upwards, only to be defeated each time by the false-painted ceiling.</p>
<p>As the brothers talked (outside the twilight rapidly approached dawn) Balthier's desire grew: to dare the blizzard, to try his wings on earth, to flee. Irritation and a need for motion Balthier could not acknowledge as fear. Vayne was waiting for him. Balthier had aspired to the impossible. So close to achievement, he would not be reduced to begging.<br/>He could have lived his life entirely in another's hands, and had chosen otherwise. That his death returned him to this situation was intolerable.</p>
<p>Balthier kicked a candle. Inspiration struck as the shaft did, clattering against the fallen iron candelabra.</p>
<p>'You must remove your brother's chains,' Balthier instructed, 'if either of you have ever aspired to any kind of freedom.'</p>
<p>Noah appeared tormented, Basch bemused, but that was not unusual for either of them. Balthier would be responsible for revelation again. He disposed of Noah's robes with the respect that priestly garb deserved. They proved too dense to catch alight immediately, smoldering atop those few candles that resisted extinguishing.</p>
<p>The shock of discovering that impossible tight chain kept Basch from motion ('one must carry out the tasks which which one's been set, or expect punishment if you don't,' Balthier had to chide), a moment after which Basch avoided thought with decisive action. Where Noah stood staunch and unflinching for each loop loosened, Basch shivered and shuddered at what marks remained upon his sibling's flesh.</p>
<p>Noah glared at the demon as though to place blame for Basch's assumption of his pain.</p>
<p>The pair of them were truly perverse.</p>
<p>Balthier could not reconcile with his resurgent desire, which hammered a throbbing demand through his groin the longer Noah stood bare. Perhaps Vayne had been correct, that Balthier's life had been that of a decadent, his existence after death entirely demonic to depend so thoroughly on definitions of sin.</p>
<p>There was something he had never chanced to have from Noah, for that Balthier had never been in the position to claim.<br/>'I was never someone who would take an unwilling partner.' He was still a man, Balthier decided of himself, not a demon, if he could abide by his distinction. 'Noah, I want…I will only—if you agree—'</p>
<p>Basch had no right to look stricken, then hurt. But Balthier remembered even when alive he had never been able to live up to everything people had expected of him.</p>
<p>'Come on then,' Noah said, still glaring, with an intensity Balthier had never heard from him before. 'Would that all our freedoms were so pleasantly gifted as yours.'</p>
<p>In a space he swept clear of candles and wax, ('not on the altar,' Noah had been forced to declare when Basch hunted the room for an applicable surface) Basch sat, knees wide, and offered his chest as cushion for Noah's extant bruises. So willingly Noah went to that cradle. Basch stroked his brother's hair and flesh, but absently, as though acquainting himself with limbs recovered out of numbness, and Noah settled as though for sleep.</p>
<p>Balthier's response was undeniable. Even as he went to them both, his fluctuating dark swelled to fear. He could not consider what kind of ghoul he would become if he chanced to forget how beautiful they looked in each other's arms, but his overwhelming hunger was one too base for aesthetic considerations, or investment beyond the flesh.</p>
<p>(Distantly, Balthier was sure this was not his usual measure. Was it desperation that wrote him so cruelly?)</p>
<p>Holding his own prick for guidance, Balthier silenced Noah's lips with his even as he shoved. He would not allow a chance bitter word, not now. Noah's hands closed clawlike into the meat of Basch's cushioning thighs as Balthier traced the stretched skin that held him, marveling. His tail seemed possessed of sensation and drive of its own, to follow where fingers and prick pressed.</p>
<p>Noah flinched at that unexpected seeking touch. Bound in Noah's shuddering flesh, Balthier remembered aspects of life that he had forgotten: niceties of conduct, the penchant of the physical for pain.</p>
<p>But Noah only sighed, open-mouthed, as though daring the inferno Balthier held inside.</p>
<p>Basch settled his hands to span the narrow part of Balthier's waist and draw the demon back into his brother. After the end of that probation, even had Noah cried out for mercy Balthier would have delivered none.</p>
<p>Balthier's passions had always bordered on madness, a genetic gift that his focus was absolute and undivided, wholly engaged; his commitment, once seduced, entire. Had he seen himself, he would not have been surprised to find his eyes aflame. All his energy gathered momentum towards his one final thrust. He scented blood on the air, saw agony on Noah's twisting lips ('the heat,' Noah groaned, 'you must hold'); Balthier could not decide if his continued fervor was provoked by some forgotten hurt or his own bestiality, for his satisfaction overruled all reason.</p>
<p>Noah cried out without words, a painful wanting, yet Basch's voice had always been dedicated to the restoration of moral balance, a growl of passion or distraction. 'Balthier. I have faith that you will keep murder from your list of depravity. Remember what you are.'</p>
<p>Now Basch's hand fought against the press of Balthier's shoulder, even as the other cupped Noah's upturned chin as though to offer solace.</p>
<p>Balthier held Basch's wrist. Balthier was grateful for the touch, Basch, for the opportunity to justify his presence here.</p>
<p>'You were never so cruel,' Basch reminded Balthier.</p>
<p>'Aye, I was,' Balthier contradicted (he was sure of this), 'but I masked it better. All I ever wanted was response.'<br/>'You once had kinder methods for provoking exactly that.' Basch's smile began hesitantly, suddenly blooming, a grin manic and mischievous in memoriam. Still under onslaught, Noah managed a laugh.</p>
<p>Balthier contrived to a great extent to get the pair to this position voluntarily, yet while they lay in a state of no small pain and some lust (Noah's shuddered clear of his chain-bruised belly, rigid and bruised-looking beside actual bruises, Basch's visible in shining eyes and ceaseless hands), Balthier felt only as though a vast darkness grew apace with his drive to conclusion.</p>
<p>Surely this act could be sufficient reprisal of who he had been? He had been deceitful, lustful, utterly faithless: he had believed in love, for it formed a perfect basis for exploitation. He acted as he once had, but he felt – still empty.</p>
<p>In the absence of Balthier's forward drive, Noah rocked onto him in what must have been a demonstration of trust directed to a man long dead.</p>
<p>Balthier remembered: neither brother found satisfaction in being defined by passivity.</p>
<p>He withdrew, too abruptly for he left Noah gasping. 'I cannot believe either of you truly wished this priestly servitude. Did it just seem the easiest way forward? Another to tell you what to do that you will never be held responsible again! When I leave, will you not just blame all these events on me, and resume your duties with greater penitence than before?'</p>
<p>'Balthier,' Basch said, 'we would not.'</p>
<p>In Noah's case, neither of them believed that. That reclining brother's hand fluttered, unapplied, about the root of his untended desire.</p>
<p>'Prove yourself participants,' Balthier declared. 'I know my investment here is not simulated.'</p>
<p>Basch took the path of rueful misgiving: Noah's intensity had him roll atop Balthier without preamble. This time, without his candle (Balthier grimaced) Noah's fingers sought first for permissibility and paused within.</p>
<p>'Tis almost overmuch, but I can bear this,' Noah murmured, and succeeded in drawing his brother's hand down beside his. Balthier widened his eyes in shock (and Basch smirked,) while they both delved him in unison.</p>
<p>'Not unbearable,' Basch agreed, 'if only just.'</p>
<p>Feeling their motion together sparked a strange longing in Balthier, for he could never have had them both like this in life. He had not expected death to offer new opportunity, only the re-experience of the old.</p>
<p>'Both of you,' Balthier said, not altogether humbly. 'If you can bear my touch, then I will bear yours. You cannot hurt me,' he said it too petulantly (pain was the ultimate of mortal sensations, and could drive away this awkward emotion that suggested tenderness when he wanted only response), 'so consider only yourselves.'</p>
<p>Noah was looking at Basch when he replied. 'You cannot make selfish men out of us, demon.'</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
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</p><p>Basch was groaning, 'oh gods,' but Noah could not, would not, ever pray again.</p>
<p>He dared this first without allowing Basch opportunity to lead, avoiding his tendency to follow. He lost himself in his rediscovery of penetration, the tightness gripping him, the pleasure of anticipation for they all knew how this would end. The only true desire was in prolonging this.</p>
<p>Noah's teeth found the metal that Balthier imagined he wore through his ears. All aspects of the demon tasted like mist.</p>
<p>Basch's fingers flicked about where Balthier spanned Noah, provoking a betraying jerk of response that Noah knew Balthier felt. He could not reclaim his breath from Balthier's ear. A horn scraped against stone, and Noah's skin was wracked with gooseflesh.</p>
<p>'You can't—'</p>
<p>Whatever his contortion to present to both of them, Balthier answered without strain. 'Basch! You always assume capability on behalf of others. This is not an area where ever-present excess is desirable: capacity is only discovered when the need is introduced.'</p>
<p>Basch was blushing, flaming as he pressed within, in a thrust timed with Noah's re-entry. The torrent of vile vowels Balthier released was incongruous with his composure and seemingly for Basch's benefit, for the demon had vowed he could not be hurt. Noah looked over a winged curve to see Basch's rapture engulf his reason, fingers lost in sharp-edged feathers, Balthier's tail twined about Basch's torso in a way that suggested a lower use: Noah could not see the tip.</p>
<p>The length of Basch's cock matched Noah's, their pulse impossibly strong, shared; Balthier's delirium of sensation bound the two of them together, each thrust a torment of friction for Noah as anchor, for he could read each inch of Basch's presence more than he felt Balthier's span, that latter but an encompassing heat.  Whether Balthier's response was feigned or felt, Noah did not judge: scalding threads already turned Noah's belly into a red lattice to match any a whipping; burns instead of bites ringed his throat.</p>
<p>Balthier was too composed for how his body bent to their demands. 'It occurs to me that I have one last promise to fulfill, Noah, what you truly want. You and Basch, still distant; this current connection is but a passive communication provoked only by my intermediate presence.'</p>
<p>Lost in his own delirium, Noah understood that, but could think of no method to prevent the inevitable  With redoubled effort, Balthier resumed control of the pace.  With a strange tenderness, feathers and fingers both brushed across Noah's brow in farewell, while Basch's rising pitch of moan bespoke the judicious application of that diligent tail.<br/>Balthier vanished just as he brought them to spend.</p>
<p>Deprived of balance, Basch fell. Noah locked his wrists against the small of Basch's back to prevent retreat, but Basch did not seem inclined to move. Across their bellies shared spill welded them together, stinging in the rawness left from Balthier's pre-emptive trails.</p>
<p>Basch still moved with the echo of his previous momentum, sighing. Their sensitized flesh jerked and ached in unison. There was very little light left in the room. Noah was glad; he could not bear to look upon sacrilege, to recognize actuality.</p>
<p>'We cannot stay here,' Noah said. 'Not now. You know what we have done.'</p>
<p>Basch's breath tickled an ear, the opposite side to where Balthier angled. 'Don't say that. If we leave, it is because we choose not to stay here.'</p>
<p>'There is nowhere we can go.  The world knows who we are.'</p>
<p>'Ivalice is large.' The rough skin of Basch's lips scratched against Noah's cheek. 'Tis less a matter of somewhere to go than finding somewhat to do. And that, Noah, I have no doubt we will discover.'</p>
<p>Noah could have held it against him that Basch had not suffered through this. He had often felt a real, sustained life would only begin once authenticated by service. Infernal intervention always seemed to plague him in achieving what he thought true freedom could offer. Even existential straws broke under strain.</p>
<p>Noah clutched at the knotted muscle around Basch's spine, where each bone felt like the link of a flesh-warm chain. <br/>'The only thing we could hope for,' Noah said, 'is that after we die men will say we did our duty.'</p>
<p>But Basch laughed, his ribs jarring against Noah's, and laughed: 'Since when is death a barrier to further achievement?'<br/>Noah punched his brother's arm with affection. Basch rolled to break the unfortunate glue that stuck them together and found the space to strike back, with unequivocal expectation as to the fondness of response that awaited him.</p>
<p>Seeing this was a moment to which he could not offer anything further, Balthier departed entirely.</p>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
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</p><p>When Balthier returned he noted the realm lacked its customary chromatic restriction. On the horizon, always just beyond the edge of Balthier's periphery, rainbows and stormclouds warred for dominance, primary colours conflicting against all the shades of a bruise.</p>
<p>Vayne was displeased.</p>
<p>Balthier wondered if this was why he had been unable to assume his customary white wings on his return to this realm, for that feathered form had been of Vayne's imagining, not his. The storm thickened as Balthier walked from edge to centre, unable to fly.</p>
<p>Behind Vayne, the construct spun a web impossible to read, yet of a form that tugged at Balthier's recognition and engendered unease.</p>
<p>'My Lord—'</p>
<p>'I should have let you fade,' Vayne said. 'I should have left you to the nothingness of death. Why do you deserve so many second chances: I had none! I had to make my chances, yet you! You are offered, and each time you spurn!'<br/>'My Lord, I came back! If it took too long, well, you set no limits—'</p>
<p>Vayne spoke with a vitriol that matched the mist of their making. 'What do you think you have done, Balthier? Corrupted a pair of priests? Why them! Why of all Ivalice did you think to go to them, why! I will let you know now that I went to great striving from this impossible distance to ensure that pair were put away in the safest place possible: the Ronsenburgs' disharmony once proved the lever through which I turned the world on its axis! You have unleashed them in harmony: have you any concept of the power they bear, together?'</p>
<p>Balthier frowned to mask his sudden understanding. Silence seemed wisest. He found himself kneeling before Vayne without any true recollection of having knelt, or been knelt. Balthier still had horns. The shadow of his tail painted an inky stripe across his shoulder.</p>
<p>His unease could find no relief in the sky, where stormclouds and chaos approached. 'My Lord, forgive me. I had no concept of your plans…'</p>
<p>'If you can dissemble, you've obviously recovered yourself, persistently bloody helpful whatever your scorn. Is your confusion a part of the charm, or are you truly so clueless?' Vayne's contempt seemed mild and automatic, almost impersonal. 'Lend your assistance to this tangled web. I would have your thoughts.'</p>
<p>The construct's chaos matched that of the sky. On the horizon, a forest flowered and died in the time it took Balthier to blink thrice.</p>
<p>'But what is it?'</p>
<p>Vayne's eyes blazed with the only passion the man had ever shown, as ever towards his impossible ideals. 'As you would be aware from your recent experiences, mortals bear no accountability for their actions, constructing instead arbitrary rules for existence in which the true gods did not care. I once fought to free Ivalice from the reins of the gods that all men could take their own path, but now I have the benefit of both hindsight and foresight. I have seen the future, Balthier. A free man will do nothing but run from responsibility, and in avoidance, all history spins unleashed: regard, the web, and the indeterminate chaos of the sky. There must be order. Prior to your arrival I eradicated the old gods who dwelled in this place, I claimed their eyes and dispelled their demons. My device will create a new order; I seek to make humes accountable again. The device will sort their souls. In fear of judgment at the times of their deaths, perhaps they will lead worthier lives.'</p>
<p>Yet the sky, while chaotic, had a magnificent scale of beauty to it that an insurmountable unchanging blue never could. Of all the elements, Balthier thought himself best able to judge the sky yet an argument as to aesthetics was not what Vayne sought.</p>
<p>With a peaceful confidence, Balthier stood and shook his head.</p>
<p>'Vayne Solidor, even you cannot judge the life another man leads, for the only skin you've ever worn is your own. No man can judge the extent of another, the worth: you should not think to remove the free will you fought to achieve with a new threat of punishment. How is this different to what the Occurians demanded except that it's you, not an Occuria, not an old god?'</p>
<p>Vayne's eyes were black, without pupil or white.</p>
<p>'I won't help you craft this thing,' Balthier added, for clarity.</p>
<p>Vayne smiled, to laugh. Death had not improved the sound. The black edges of Vayne's wings looked metallic, striking shards of light to scatter across the sand.</p>
<p>'And so, you truly are recovered of yourself. But you are bound by your vow to me. Is this how you choose to assist me, then? This is how you choose to stand, Balthier, on the side of those of weak will and ambiguous intent?'</p>
<p>'Lord. I'm sorry. But have I ever sided otherwise?'</p>
<p>'So be it.'</p>
<p>The sky went black, or perhaps, Balthier went blind.</p>
<p>'I would have you know I have every respect for your love of evil. But love is weakness, Balthier, and evil is selfishness; there can be no grey in defining mortal progress. Until the term of your service is expired, enjoy your eternity.'</p>
<p>The light reasserted itself with a dull reddish glaze to set the sudden surround of layered black rock gleaming. Balthier was less distressed that he thought he would be to find his surrounds so distinct from where he had been, a veritable inversion: he knew Vayne shared his fondness for melodrama.</p>
<p>His steps echoed. The expanse of this realm was infinite, as boring as the overrealm, but at least the raw material of obsidian suggested a hope for architecture or activity, futile or not: the endless white-blue of above offered only insanity. Still, Balthier's continued solitude provoked a mild anxiety, augmented by the lack of sky. He had never dealt well with caves.</p>
<p>Perhaps it was that anxiety that stopped his thoughts achieving their goal, for it took him what he judged as half a day to understand.</p>
<p>Revelation struck rarely, but hard.</p>
<p>The Lord of Hell laughed until he wept.</p>
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